OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 in Microsoft Foundry: Frontier intelligence on an enterprise ready platform

By Dustin Ward

OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 will be generally available tomorrow in Microsoft Foundry, bringing OpenAI’s latest frontier model to Azure and the enterprise teams building agents for real production work. GPT-5.5 continues a clear progression in the GPT-5 series. GPT-5 brought unified reasoning and speed into a single system. GPT-5.4 brought stronger multi-step reasoning and early agentic capabilities…

Microsoft Discovery: Advancing agentic R&D at scale

By Dustin Ward

Transforming R&D with agentic AI: Introducing Microsoft Discovery Read the blog Over the past year, we’ve made significant progress with Microsoft Discovery by working closely with research and development (R&D) organizations. Today, we’re sharing how those efforts are translating into real momentum for customers and partners, while also expanding preview access to Microsoft Discovery. This…

Cloud Cost Optimization: Principles that still matter

By Dustin Ward

In this article What is cloud cost optimization and why does it still matter? How AI workloads change traditional cost optimization Cloud cost optimization best practices for AI and modern workloads Cloud cost management versus cost optimization Measuring value alongside cloud cost optimization Next steps for cloud cost optimization on Azure This blog post is…

AI for nuclear energy: Powering an intelligent, resilient future

By Dustin Ward

The world is racing to meet a historic surge in power demand with an infrastructure pipeline built for the analog age. Driven by the exponential expansion of digital technologies and the reindustrialization of supply chains, the mandate for always-on, carbon-free power is urgent and absolute. Nuclear energy is the essential backbone for this future, but…

FabCon and SQLCon 2026: Unifying databases and Fabric on a single data platform

By Dustin Ward

In this article Introducing the Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric Getting your data estate ready for AI with Fabric Unifying your data estate with Microsoft OneLake Processing and harmonizing data with Fabric analytics Creating semantic meaning with Fabric IQ Empowering agents to act with Fabric data and operations agents Building mission-critical applications with developer experiences…